Medina first came to prominence as a junior winning the Rip Curl International GromSearch Final, the WSL World Junior Title and rapidly qualifying for the men’s world tour in his first year, bursting onto the scene in 2011 and winning two of the first four WSL World Tour events he contested.

He steadily improved his ranking until winning last year’s 2014 World Surf League season when he became the first-ever Brazilian men’s world surfing champion and the youngest surfer to win the world surfing title since Kelly Slater. “The most important thing in a relationship like this is that the surfer feels at home.

That makes performing at the top level easier for him,” said Neil Ridgway, Rip Curl’s Marketing Chairman. “Rip Curl really strives to support kids from junior to world champion and Gabriel is a great example of that program.